The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 14 Review

Credit to: Disney and Lucasfilm

It’s almost over? Already?

Welcome back, y’all! This time around, we’re taking a look at episode 14 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 2! Uh, well, it’s almost here. The season finale… huh. I’m not too sure what to really think of this season when I think of the recap. Not much got done whatsoever, which has been a pretty big complaint of mine. It’s a little disappointing, because you’d expect more to happen, especially since in the last season we had that cliffhanger with Mount Tantiss that made us all speculate like crazy, wondering what was going on. Now that we’re here, we’re still kinda waiting to see what the whole point of that cliffhanger was. They’ve taken so much time to show us anything important that I really thought we had like 6 episodes after this. Unfortunately, this episode kinda wastes time as well. Cool stuff here, I guess, but the progress made here was little to none. Not gonna lie, I’m ready for the season to end, we need to make space for some quality content. Anyway, without any further ado, let’s just jump right into it.

Episode 14: Tipping Point

Pros:

I’ll say this: I enjoyed how dark the events with Crosshair are going down, I do enjoy that. I like the mystery involved with this weird, special project that’s being headed by Dr. Hemlock. I think that’s cool, and it does make me theorize. In my opinion, it’s looking like we’re watching the beginnings of the Dark Trooper Program, which may give us a chance to see Moff Gideon in the next or last episode, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up because that could very well be untrue. However, we do know that Gideon was attached to the program, and we do know that the earliest dark trooper were in fact living individuals who were cybernetically enhanced. Specifically, this first dark trooper was called the Phase Zero dark trooper who were actually clone veterans from the Clone War. Dr. Hemlock has clones transported to Mount Tantiss so he could experiment on them off-record. Seems very likely. It could be that, or we might even be seeing the birth of the death trooper, first seen in Star Wars: Rogue One. Maybe I’m speculating a bit too much, but it’s really we’ve got at the moment. Something else I did enjoy was seeing not only Echo return, but Captain Rex, saving a group of clones from being transported to the research facility, while beginning our investigation into what the Empire could be planning for the clones they’ve already taken, one of those clones being Crosshair. Crosshair also appears in this episode, being tortured to cough up the location of the Bad Batch and specifically Omega. It’s all very interesting, it really is, but this is happening so late in the season. We didn’t need to see all that unnecessary racing and treasure hunting and this and that and all in-between. It was nice at the time, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like we’re getting 20 episodes here. Sorry, this is the Pros section. Anyway, I like the set up here. We’ve got an interesting story to explore, and I will admit that they have my attention… finally.

Cons

Man, why is this happening so late in the season? More than that, why didn’t we get a little more in this episode? We finally know what the plot is, yes I said “finally”, so I’m happy with that, but so late in the season? Where’s Cody? There are so many questions I have. Like I wish we could’ve gotten more so badly. Once again, we arrive later in the season for this series, at a point where we should’ve been like 3 or 4 episodes ago so we could explore this interesting dilemma, but it’ll be rushed and wasted. The Kamino stuff was great in the last season, but that could’ve been so much more had they done something to really excite us. Emotional, sure, and it set up like, 2 episodes in this season which is a waste when you think about it but at least it was relevant, but in the end it wound up being pretty useless in this season. We have Mount Tantiss, which in Legends material made for a location that was a part of a pretty great story, we have the return of Captain Rex and Commander Cody who somehow have yet to cross paths, we have the return of Scorch and a big presence of other clone commandos who are just there to fill in the blank screen because they do basically nothing (except get eaten apparently), and we have the Batch themselves who really aren’t up to much. This episode itself wasn’t bad, but we did almost nothing here except for the very beginning and the very end. Crosshair did something too, but that was just so the Batch could be set up for the next episode so he really wasn’t doing too much either. This just isn’t fun. These little side stories we’re getting could be used for something else entirely, not this series. It’s official, this series has wasted potential. “But there’s 2 more episodes!” I understand that, but what can go down in 2 episodes if we rushed to get that point? Not much. Such a waste, man.

Final Thoughts

Where was the tipping point, exactly? Maybe in the next episode, but not this one. We’re being set up for a tipping point, but it’s not happening in this episode here. Some of the stuff was cool, but we got absolutely nowhere until the end. The series itself just has to stop. I can’t see this going any further than a season 3, because this is such a drag to watch now. I want to say that I’m excited to see how this ends, but I’m really not. Curious for sure, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not anticipating anything right now. Such a shame. But what did you all think? Let us know on our Instagram, and make sure you’re following us there to stay up to date with the latest and greatest entertainment news. But that’s all from me, this has been The Wolf Den.

2 out of 5.